Memories / by Edward Clodd.

  • Edward Clodd
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Memories / by Edward Clodd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    But I must confess to a certain quickening of interest in my ancestry when I learnt that my earthborn name is as old as it is rare. Staying with the late Felix Cobbold, he said to me, “ Your name goes a long while back in Suffolk.” In proof of this he showed me an entry—Subsidy Returns of the County of Suffolk in 1327. Villata de Otteleye (Otley) Carlford Hundred. Johanne Clod, XII pence. Also, with a leap of more than three centuries, in the Hearth Tax Rates for Suffolk in 1674, one Charles Clod of Debenham, assessed. Enough. Under these dusty records let “ The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.*’ Seventy years ago, Aldeburgh, now the haunt of golfers and yachtsmen, retained many of the features of an old fishing and smuggling port which are described with the minuteness and fidelity of a Dutch painting in Crabbe’s Borough. The nearest station on the Eastern Counties Railway, as it was then named, was at Ipswich, twenty-four miles distant; hence pas¬ sengers, parcels and newspapers were dependent on the coach that plied daily between the two places. My memory recalls how, in 1854, when the Crimean War was raging, we schoolboys used to assemble at the Reading Room to await the arrival of The Times, from which the Vicar read the news to our excited ears. When, many years later, taking a trip up the Gulf of Finland, I saw the fortresses of Sveaborg and Cronstadt, the past came back to me with a strange vividness. As for books, they were far to seek in any number. The Bible, Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War, Baxter’s Samts' Everlasting Rest, Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs and some odd missionary magazines, com¬ plete the serious list. I consider myself fortunate that
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